“The Darkness That Haunts Us” A fictional short story exploring emotion and the choices between friendship and family while two enemies, Xandra and Amara, navigate through their differences as they are forced to work together. These characters get assigned to a top secret mission together, but neither of them work with other people, and especially not each other. They see each other as completely different, and have no desire to work with the other. But, in order to complete their assignment, they must. Will this bring them closer together, or push them even further apart? Read it to find out. “The Little Boy” This narrative poem elaborately investigates the eerie fear and darkness of forests at night, and a surprise the narrator will never forget. It shows how you have to make the most of every moment, because you never know how much time you have left. “The Halloween Costume Crisis” This is my story of a Halloween costume crisis I had to face from a few years ago that taught me some very important lessons. I had forgotten about Halloween, and only had a few days to get something to wear besides a sheet ghost. After a lot of stress, I ended up with my best costume to date. I go into depth on how I came up with ideas, and my strange thought process as a middle schooler behind them. Through this experience, I learned that sometimes even things that seem like the worst situation ever will work out in the end.